Archives for June 2018

“I always want an element of my work to be philanthropic,” says musician Paul Johnson.

For Nashville musician Paul Johnson, MUSIC & MEMORY® is more than a non-profit organization that deserves his financial support. It’s a reminder of a conscious choice to make music his life’s work. “Here’s why we’re making music,” says Paul. “When it becomes an important part of someone’s life, that’s a powerful and beautiful thing.”

Music has been part of Paul’s life for as long as he can remember. Growing up in Fargo, N.D., he was surrounded by singing and harmonizing. His parents met in a college folk trio, and guitars were always within easy reach at home. Paul was also surrounded by a close-knit family. His paternal grandfather, Bob, and extended family lived just across the Red River in Minnesota.

When Paul was a teen, Bob developed Alzheimer’s. His father would often visit and help with Bob’s care. Their relationship made a huge impression on Paul, as he watched first-hand how his grandfather’s health and mental ability deteriorated over the last years of his life.

“What was equally as impactful, if not more so,” he says, “was to see the effect on my Dad, slowly losing his parent, but also, in that loss, finding places to celebrate. Those moments of presence and light were all the more important.”

A Reminder of Music’s Personal Impact

So when Paul, now a full-time professional musician, happened across the Music & Memory documentary Alive Inside while surfing Netflix several years ago, he was deeply moved: “I remembered how a good day could be such a breath of fresh air, a day when you saw a little of the person that you knew. I wished we’d had this information sooner, to try it with my grandfather.”

Music & Memory’s mission to spread the power of personal music also struck a chord with Paul: “How music can be a soundtrack for important moments in people’s lives, how it benefits both individuals and their caretakers. As a musician, I was really affected by the way the music could be impactful.”

Paul’s musical career has evolved over the past decade, beginning when he came to Nashville as an 18-year-old to study the business of music at Belmont University. That lasted a year. Paul’s real passion was playing music and song-writing, so he began working part-time as a session player for other musicians, and in the process, learned to produce his own compositions.

For the past three years, he has worked full-time writing songs, producing them, and performing under the name Canyon City Building an online audience via Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube videos, he describes his style as “indie folk.”

Philanthropy as a Business Cornerstone

Paul with his sister, Emily, and grandfather Bob Johnson

Recalling his grandfather—known as Big Red because of his tall stature and red hair—Paul is wistful.

“He was a humble guy, not one to brag about his experiences,” he says of the man who was first in his family to go to college with a basketball scholarship, earned a doctorate in physical education, helped found Southwest Minnesota State University, started his own business and served in the 82nd Airborne.

“He didn’t recommend jumping out of planes!” says Paul. “He was always hardworking. Family was really integral to him.”

As Bob’s life drew to a close, Paul says, “I felt like I was getting to know him as he was going. You hear all these stories, windows into the seasons of life. It was like meeting and losing a person at the same time. My hope, as I get older, as my family and friends get older, is that there will be treatments available that will allow us to have those moments of presence more often than not.”

Supporting Music & Memory was a natural step toward realizing that hope. “I always want an element of my work to be philanthropic,” says Paul. “It helps me to have that commitment, to help the world as I move through it. As Canyon City grows, I want to build in ways to be generous and doing good. Music & Memory was an obvious choice to support. It’s about more than the music. It’s a consistent reminder to me why this is good work.”

Founded in 2010, MUSIC & MEMORY® is a non-profit organization that brings personalized music into the lives of people with cognitive or physical conditions through digital music technology, vastly improving quality of life.

In thousands of MUSIC & MEMORY® Certified Care Organizations, we’ve witnessed time and again how musical favorites can help people with Alzheimer’s and other dementias reconnect with the world. Now, a team of researchers at the University of Utah Health in Salt Lake City have demonstrated the brain chemistry underlying that remarkable reawakening.

A study published in the April online issue of The Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease reports how the U of U Health team found preliminary evidence that familiar music may facilitate attention, reward and motivation, which in turn makes it more possible to manage emotional distress in Alzheimer’s.

As Alzheimer’s progresses, language and memory centers in the brain are the most vulnerable to damage. However, certain brain networks remain relatively functional—in particular, those areas responsible for attention, known as the salience network. This is the same part of the brain that registers the thrill of listening to favorite music in a person who is cognitively healthy.

So researchers wondered: Would musical favorites “light up” the salience network of someone with Alzheimer’s during an MRI brain scan? To find out, they recruited 17 participants with dementia to undergo MRIs as they listened to 20-second clips of music from their personalized playlists. For each participant, researchers played eight music clips, the same eight clips played in reverse, and eight blocks of silence.

Musical Favorites Stimulate Several Areas of the Brain

MRI image comparisons indicated that musical favorites stimulate several areas of the brain: not only the salience network, but also visual, executive and cerebellar networks. All showed significantly higher functional connectivity with music versus silence.

According to Norman Foster, M.D., Director of the Center for Alzheimer’s Care at U of U Health and senior author of the study, the research provides “objective evidence from brain imaging that shows personally meaningful music is an alternative route for communicating with patients who have Alzheimer’s disease.”

While the study’s small sample size and single imaging sessions leave room for more research to be done, the findings mark a significant step toward demonstrating how Music & Memory’s personalized music program is a therapeutic mechanism to address measurable improvement in mood, awareness and quality of life for people with dementia.

“This is an exciting development as we watch researchers in the U.S. and around the world continue to ground our work in evidence-based science,” says Dan Cohen, Music & Memory founder and Executive Director. “Personally meaningful music should be considered as a standard of care for all people with dementia.”

Founded in 2010, MUSIC & MEMORY® is a non-profit organization that brings personalized music into the lives of people with cognitive or physical conditions through digital music technology, vastly improving quality of life.